Hence SB1601.
She does represent me in the state Senate. I did not vote for her and I will not vote for her. For those who want to bring Texas into the future, I apologize on behalf of my senate district.
The sad fact is that Lois is actually among the more sane of our state senators. Compared to most, she’s really not all that bad.
I was going off the DMN articles from earlier in the week- they were talking to state House members from places along I-45 who were griping that this rail was going to somehow cut one side of their property off from the other; despite the TCR people saying they could put in archways and other stuff like that.
Interstate 5 more or less began in 1956 and was completed in 1979, connecting Mexico and Canada with 1,300 miles of road. 23 years from start to finish.
Here in DC, we just opened a new portion of the subway system. It added 11.7 miles of track, and will be followed by another 11 miles to open in 2018. The project design started in 2000. 18 years of work, 23 miles of track.
If the interstate system started today, I do think it would take much, much longer to complete than it did. I also bet that there would be many more holes in the system, like how I-70 never made it all the way to I-95.
Although it’s almost certainly not a factor in high speed train planning, it’s infinitely easier to sabotage a high-speed train than shoot an airliner down.
You will of course have the obligatory security theatre at the train stations that is no different to airport security and in fact from various stories about bus and low speed trains, worse!
However the real threat is simple industrial explosives on or near tracks. Derailing trains was a particularly effective hobby of the resistance in France WW-II. And that in the presence of large numbers of troops with a shoot-to-kill policy.
Fun viewing–your OSS teaches you how:
[quote=“dropzone, post:85, topic:394385”]
Fun viewing–your OSS teaches you how:
[/QUOTE]You realise everyone who clicks on your links is on an NSA watchlist?!
Even worse they are on a Google Watchlist!
Wouldn’t you get better socio-economic returns from improved public transport within existing commuter “regions”?
Chinese-sounding user-name proposes Chinese-sounding solution to grave problem! There’s actually a lot that can be accomplished in a somewhat benevolent but often malevolent autocracy.
I think, though, that we don’t have the population density to support a Chinese-style rail system. Don’t get me wrong; I love the Chinese rail system, but the USA isn’t China.
Regarding the population density issue, there is no place at all in America that comes close to many other countries. I’m going to quote myself from another thread:
America is a pretty big place. There are parts of the country where you could drop the entire island of Britain, as is, including Hebrides, on the land and not be close to touching a city of 50K people (not even counting Alaska). The transportation solutions that work in the UK are probably not suitable for most of America
And I’ll quote myself in that thread:
I’m looking at a map of the lower 48 with the UK superimposed on it, and I’m not sure this is correct. The UK isn’t that small. 
Give it a go here. The map on the right lets you plonk the UK down anywhere.
I take your wider point though.
If you move the overlay north and west, so that it is centered near the Kansas-Colorado border and jutting into SD, you will be in a very sparsely populated area (I said “island of Britain”, meaning, not including NI).
Nobody is talking about building a high-speed rail to connect North Dakota to South Dakota. Yes, the United States has vast tracts of empty space. We also have densely populated urban areas. Like, you know, the Washington to Boston corridor.
I’m glad this topic has come up because it’s the first thing I thought about when I saw the American Exceptionalism thread. What is one of the negative outcomes of the idea of American Exceptionalism? Not Invented Here Syndrome. And trains are an easy example of why Not Invented Here Syndrome can lead to shoddy service.
As I understand it Federal safety legislation requires American trains to be much more heavy and crash resistant than virtually every other train in the world. This is partly due to the nature of US railways whereby passenger trains are more vulnerable to potentially dangerous freight traffic, but it is also to ensure greater safety for passengers in the event of non- freight accidents, for example a derail. So that’s great- hypothetically an accident in Europe (with it’s lightweight trains) that kills ten people would maybe only kill three people if it happened in the US with it’s very different style of rail transport. However because the American trains are so heavy they are also slow and have poor fuel efficiency, which also means ticket prices are comparatively more expensive for what is a worse service. This in turn means that poor profit margins for the train companies lead them to offer fewer services or even refuse to operate a service in many towns, in locations that would be lucrative markets were they in another country. The result of this is less people use trains and instead drive instead.
Car driving is an exponentially more dangerous form of transport than trains or planes are, so the superficially top notch health & safety culture of the federal government would actually save more lives if they made the trains less safe. A perfect anecdote would be the decline of plane travel after 9/11. People switched to their cars because they perceived driving to be safer than planes, despite the fact that you are statistically at least a thousand times more likely to die in a car accident than be killed by Al-Qaeda. There is a point where American Exceptionalism (assuming it even exists) can become an excuse for putting up with crap because “what works in the rest of the world can’t work here because it was Not Invented Here”.
Another good example of this is American train operators reluctance to consider using a new improved type of carriage that cost no more than existing designs
Yes, such a system exists. It’s called air travel :). Planes can land anywhere there is a runway and don’t need to worry about crossing jungles, dangerous mountain passes, or already built-up areas. Want to add a destination? Clear some area, build a landing strip, and start landing prop planes the next month.
Just connecting SF to LA would cost $68 billion for high speed rail. I think the hyperloop is closer to 6-16 billion.
High speed rail would be about $178,000,000 per mile (hyperloop a fraction of that). Is that economical? I don’t know the economics of these things.
I started a thread about the California High Speed Rail project about 3 years ago. Some good discussion about that project pros/cons and on HSR in general.
The project is full of problems: oversold on benefits, undersold on costs, and the management team inept at managing expectations. I don’t think a lot of the problems have to do with Not Invented Here syndrome, because if you look at it objectively, it will raise a lot of questions regardless.
I agree with robert_columbia, in that the future has arrived - it’s down at your local metro airport. Bellyaching about the hassles of air travel will not magically make train travel a viable alternative in most cases.
I have nothing against trains - I ride regularly from Sacramento to the Bay Area on one and it is just fine. I have problems with our local HSR project, specifically.
That sounds outrageously expensive. Got a cite for that?
Well, not that this is the thread, but there are some serious questions about the actual cost of the Hyperloop. Elon Musk has a habit of letting his technological enthusiasm run away with him.